-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The deadly attack in Kabul on Shi'ite worshippers celebrating the feast of Ashura adds one more layer to the country 's overlapping security crises . And they evoke violent sectarian rivalries in Iraq and Pakistan , where animosity between Sunni and Shia runs deep . Afghanistan has its own cultural rifts -- between ethnic Pashtun and Tajik , for example -- but it 's rare to see such an explosion of religiously motivated violence .

Kate Clark , with the Afghan Analysts Network in Kabul , described the attack as `` a real shock . ''

`` Whatever else has happened in the past 30 years we have n't had this sort of sectarian attack aimed at killing lots of people , '' she told CNN by phone from the Afghan capital .

The first claim of responsibility for the bombing in the Afghan capital has come from a militant Sunni group in Pakistan with a history of sectarian attacks against Shia . A man identifying himself as a spokesman for Lashkar-e-Janghvi al Almi , a group with links to al Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban , claimed responsibility for the attack in a call to Radio Mashaal , a Pashto-language station in Pakistan sponsored by the United States government . A similar call was reportedly made to the BBC 's Urdu-language service .

The group is an offshoot of the powerful Lashkar-e-Janghvi -LRB- LeJ -RRB- , which has a record of high-profile suicide bombings in Pakistan , including the attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in 2008 . Al-Almi 's most destructive attack to date was a double suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan last year . The bombers -- wearing burkas -- killed 42 people belonging to tribes that opposed the Pakistan Taliban , also known for its antipathy toward Shia .

If the claim by Al-Almi proves valid , it would not surprise some Afghan Shia , who were quick to point the finger at some form of Pakistani involvement in the attacks Tuesday .

LeJ has a long history of targeting the Hazara Shia community in Pakistan . The Hazara are numerous in both Pakistan and Afghanistan , and make up much of Afghanistan 's Shia minority . They have endured decades of persecution in both countries , and Sunni militants have frequently painted then as collaborators with occupying powers .

This year , apparently in retaliation for the killing of Osama bin Laden , LeJ gunned down several Hazara in Quetta , capital of Balochistan province and also home to the Afghan Taliban 's political leadership . In a subsequent open letter , the LeJ warned : `` We will rid Pakistan of -LSB- this -RSB- unclean people . Pakistan means land of the pure , and the Shias have no right to be here . ''

In October , Sunni militants killed dozens more Hazara . In one instance , they stopped a bus of Shia pilgrims on their way to Iran from Pakistani Balochistan and shot dead 26 male passengers in front of their families .

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has not been obviously active in Afghanistan since it maintained training camps there during Taliban rule in the 1990s . But other Sunni militants -- especially factions among the Pakistani Taliban -- have established a presence in some Afghan border provinces . And regional analysts perceive fluid links , contacts and cross-fertilization between the myriad groups operating in the Afghan-Pakistan border region .

The Taliban were quick to disown and condemn the attacks . Kate Clark says that while she is circumspect about the Taliban 's denial , such an attack would be at odds with the Taliban leadership 's claim to be a national movement -- and is not part of a pattern of such attacks by the group .

Clark also points out that Mullah Omar in his Eid message last month urged Taliban fighters to `` protect the lives , wealth and honor of ordinary people . '' That being said , 80 percent of all civilian deaths in Afghanistan are attributed to the armed opposition ; and orders from the Quetta Shura , as the leadership is known , are only patchily enforced by field commanders . The Taliban are not a monolith , as one Afghan observer puts it , and it is possible that at local level there may have been collaboration between a Taliban operative and LeJ .

The Taliban have not played the sectarian card since becoming an insurgency . But when in power in the 1990s they brutally persecuted Afghanistan 's Hazara community . Human Rights Watch documented two massacres of Hazara in 2000 and 2001 by Taliban forces . And after capturing Mazar e Sharif in 1998 , Taliban fighters killed hundreds of Hazara in retaliation for the mass execution of its own soldiers the previous year .

Since the overthrow of the Taliban , Afghanistan 's Hazara have prospered -- in higher education , the government and the military and they have embraced new democratic processes . The annual Ashura celebration in Kabul has become more elaborate . That may have been temptation enough for the Hazaras ' enemies .

If the bombings on Tuesday were an attempt to sow sectarian strife in Afghanistan , they most obviously imitate al Qaeda in Iraq , which when led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi tried to ignite a sectarian war between Sunnis and the country 's Shi'ite majority in a series of attacks aimed at holy Shi'ite occasions and shrines .

Read the latest on the attacks and the cancellation of Karzai 's trip

Kate Clark of the Afghan Analysts Network believes that in Afghanistan restraint will prevail . Hazara leaders have already called on their community to remain calm and not to take the bait offered by these attacks . On all sides , Clark says , there is a realization that sectarian conflict is a no-win situation in which tit-for-tat attacks would claim hundreds of lives .

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Shi'ite worshippers were attacked as they celebrated Ashura

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The attack harkens violent sectarian rivalries in Iraq , Pakistan

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This kind of sectarian aggression is rare in Afghanistan